This could be better
by wildtiger7
Summary: Three scenes re-written to change the way Kalinda Sharma is portrayed. On the show, Kalinda is written as isolated, her storylines are centered around her affairs instead of her career, her actions don't have consequences and she doesn't grow or change as a person. I changed the way three scenes from the show in late season 4 and season 5 were written to address these issues.


Scene 1: Kalinda confronts Cary about him giving Robyn an offer to join his new company

"Whoa, whoa, hang on a second, here. So you can play Will and I against each other to get a better deal for yourself, but I can't do the same with you and Robyn?"

Kalinda stared at him for a moment. "You're trying to undercut me."

Cary shrugged. "Look, Kalinda, I wouldn't have any problem paying you what you asked for if I could afford it. You do the work, I know you're worth it."

"Then why did you make me an offer, if you knew you couldn't afford me?"

A hint of a smile. "Because I wanted you to come with me. Because if I didn't offer after you had helped me, that wouldn't have pleased you, either."

"I wasn't helping you to receive some sort of payment for it."

"No, but you weren't happy with the way you were being treated here, either, and for me to walk away and not offer you a chance to fix that would not have been appropriate."

Their intense conversation in the middle of the office was being noticed. Mostly, by people giving them a wide birth. Not even the insatiable office gossips were willing to get too close to Kalinda.

Kalinda stepped back from him, just a bit. "I don't need your help." Cary opened his mouth to respond, but she was gone before he could. He didn't know if she had heard what he was trying to say, or if she cared. With Kalinda, it was impossible to tell.

Scene 2: Will and Kalinda vow to take down the competition after Alicia and Cary ditch Lockhart/Gardner to start their own firm.

As Kalinda walked towards Will's office, she steeled herself from the inevitable confrontation. He was angry. He should be. She didn't know how much of his anger would be directed at her, but she had no intention of backing down.

Will didn't even wait for her to get comfortable before asking, "How long did you know?"

"About what?" The question would only make him angrier. She didn't care.

Will narrowed his eyes. "About Cary and Alicia leaving."

"I've known about Cary wanting to leave for a few months. Alicia, a few weeks." He didn't need to know exactly how many months.

"And you said nothing?"

Kalinda shrugged slightly.

"I should keep you because…?"

"I chose to stay."

"Yeah, but you didn't choose to help."

Kalinda realized she was going to have to offer him more than she was normally comfortable with. An explanation. "I entertained Cary's offer because I wasn't happy with the way you were treating me. Hiring another investigator without my input. That's not how you treat an employee you value."

Will gave her a look of equal parts anger and exasperation. "You do contract work. It's not the same as an in-house employee."

"So?"

Will huffed. "You still should have said something."

"Cary didn't like the way he was being treated, either. So he did something about it. That's not my problem. It's yours."

"It's your problem too, you still work here!"

"I'm not an in-house employee."

"So?"

Kalinda smirked. "So, while people were running around stabbing you in the back, I paid attention to what knives they were using and where they were stabbing."

"This is what you're offering to keep your job? Information you should have provided us with before we were blindsided?"

"Take it or leave it, Will."

"Alicia and Cary already have an investigator."

"You don't think they'd trade Robyn for me?"

She had him and they both knew it. This was not a discussion that Will was going to come out ahead in. This was the way Kalinda worked, he had accepted that a long time ago.

"So… what do you know?"

Kalinda smiled.

Scene 3: Kalinda is pulled over for speeding through city streets. The arresting cop lets her go, and later Kalinda is seen sleeping with this same cop.

Kalinda sat down at her desk, intending to do something to put the latest boring meeting as far behind her as possible. It had been full of people shouting about being betrayed and losing clients and other people trying to one-up them by claiming their lost clients were more valuable. Kalinda had thought that Cary would have rather enjoyed it. She wasn't Cary.

Once Lockhart/Gardner had finally granted her an office, she used her entire decorating budget on her desk. It was a sleek, modern white desk, rounded at either end where the legs that covered the entire width of the desk went to the floor. There were no screws or lines, the entire thing was one piece.

It was perfect. No one would ever guess she had embedded a wire in it. Law offices could be the worst sort of places. Nothing she recorded on the wire could be used in court, but that was hardly why she had it.

She opened her laptop and immediately launched the tracking app that was keeping tabs on Damian's car. He hadn't been at the meeting, so that meant he was up to something stupid and reckless.

She immediately noticed he was moving much too fast along the city streets. This delighted her - maybe his car would hit a poll and it would all end in a glorious, fiery crash.

It would probably end in something much more mundane, though. And the aftermath would undoubtedly involve a boring waste of her time.

While Kalinda was imaging the details of the fiery crash, the tracker stopped moving. She looked into cameras in the area and was pleased to find one she could tap into. She called up the image just in time to see a cop putting cuffs on Damian.

Kalinda sighed. Boring waste of time.

She closed her laptop and got up from her seat, to head down to the police station and see what they had on Damian. At least the cop had been cute. Who knew? Maybe even Damian could be accidentally useful.

Author's notes:

What I didn't like about each original scene

Scene 1: Kalinda had every right to try and get the best offer possible for herself from either Will or Cary. By the same token, Cary had every right to do what was best for his company and try and get someone more affordable for a start-up. When Kalinda got mad at Cary for doing to her what she was doing to him, he didn't call her on it.

Scene 2:

Kalinda knew about Cary leaving for months and did nothing about it. She didn't try to warn the people she was choosing to stay with. Worse, she didn't even pay attention to what Cary was doing, so that way when he did leave she would be in a good position to help the firm recover from the defection. She should have known Alicia was leaving, in addition to what clients and employees were going with him. Also, the fact that she knew and didn't tell anyone should not have been glossed over. Kalinda unfortunately lives in a consequence-free lala land. She should have been held responsible for her actions with regard to the split. Inexplicably, she was not.

Scene 3:

Speeding through city streets isn't cool or badass, it's reckless and stupid. Additionally, Kalinda's sexual interactions with others are all portrayed the same way, the partner being so into her they do unacceptable things because of it. Peter slept with her even though he was married and not in an open relationship. Lana used her position in the FBI in a horrible way, to bring Kalinda under investigation just so Lana would have access to her. I'm not even going to talk about her husband. Here, she's being paired with a cop who sleeps with those she arrests. This is a terrible cop and exactly the sort of person Kalinda should stay away from. The point of the Kalinda-slept-with-Peter storyline from Kalinda's point of view is that she didn't care about the consequences of her relationships and it lead to someone she cared about being hurt. While Kalinda felt bad and apologized, her apology has been rendered worthless because she refuses to change her behavior and stay away from the wrong people.


End file.
